BAGHDAD, 15 August 2006 — The death toll from a series of massive explosions in a crowded Baghdad neighborhood climbed to 57 yesterday, amid controversy over the cause of the blasts.
While the US military blamed an accident on a gas main for the disaster, Iraqi authorities insisted that insurgents had fired rockets into the largely Shiite district of Zafaraniyah and had detonated at least two bombs.
Whatever the true cause of the blasts, the carnage increased political tensions in the war torn Iraqi capital, as Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki blamed Sunni extremists for “this ugly crime.” Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for the US-led coalition forces in Iraq, told reporters that American explosives experts believed that a major gas explosion had triggered the blasts.
“Our explosives specialists reported today that it was a very significant gas explosion on the first floor of the building,” he said.
“The secondary explosions were the result of that. There is no evidence substantiating that something else was involved. Everything now points out that it was an internal gas explosion that set off a series of other explosions.” The US position differed completely from that of the Iraqi government.
“Our information was based on a report given to us by the Interior Ministry,” said Ali Hussein, an official in the media relations department of the Council of Ministers office, part of Maliki’s government.
“There were three explosions. The first was a Katyusha rocket fired at a market. Then a car bomb exploded 100 meters away from the first explosion,” he said of the first blasts, which brought down a four-story building.
“Then an explosive went off in another building,” he said, suggesting that the US experts had been referring to this second explosion in their analysis.
Maliki accused Sunni extremists of aiming to ignite civil war. “We strongly condemn the series of terrorist attacks which were carried out by takfiri terrorists on Sunday,” the premier said in a statement. “The terrorists planned this ugly crime to kill as many innocent victims as possible,” he added.
